Yatpay's Blog

Welcome to my blog! I've been told this is a "tumble blog" which means I pretty much just post interesting pictures, videos, links, and random thoughts all day. There's no real common theme. Feel free to comment on any entry or if you like, contact me directly.

About 7 years ago

Victory!

I somehow forgot to post it here, but on Wednesday, I won the Synacor 2011 Foosball Tournament and received an iPad 2 as a prize!

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About 7 years ago

Why indeed?

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About 7 years ago

Testing my shuttle tile at the sub shop!

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About 7 years ago

Good day to wander in to El Canelo

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About 7 years ago

This picture made me laugh

A scientist works inside the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer

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About 7 years ago

Mega origami?

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About 7 years ago

The money shot

I meant to post this earlier, but once I got back to James' place I crashed for a few hours. It turns out that the sidewalk on a bridge is not the ideal sleeping environment.

I've got a lot of pictures to post, obviously, but I wanted to share the product of all my planning and rehearsing. May I present to you: the launch of space shuttle Endeavour on her final mission, STS-134.

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About 7 years ago

Front row seats

I'm really here!! Now to wait 13 hours..

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About 7 years ago

Saturn V

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About 7 years ago

Launch preparations

We're almost at T-minus 36 hours to Endeavour's launch on its mission STS-134. My brain is still kind of reconciling the fact that I really am here in Orlando and I really am going to be in a perfect position to watch the shuttle launch. I'm starting to get a little tense about the entire endeavor (get it?) since there are so many things that could still go wrong. We could get booted from squatting on the bridge, it could rain all night, weather could move in and scrub the launch, a technical issue could arise to scrub the launch... a lot of things. But so far so good. James clearly thinks I'm insane as I just forced him to rehearse the entire launch photography routine, which goes something like this:

• T-minus 30 seconds: all cameras are in position, turned on, and ready to go
• T-minus 6 seconds: judging by the delay between the radio and realtime events, I will hear this as T-minus 9 seconds. At this point, I will activate the 10 second timer on my camera, which will be fitted with the telephoto lens and pointed at the pad.
• T-minus 0 seconds: Liftoff.
• T-plus 4 seconds: Tower clear. My camera begins shooting photos.
• T-plus 11 seconds: My camera finishes taking its tenth photo. The shuttle should be several hundred feetabove the launch site at this point.
• T-plus 40 seconds: Around this time, I will ask James to ready his camera. When he says he's ready, I'll turn around long enough for him to take a picture of me in the foreground with the launch in the background. I then turn back around and continue watching the launch. James next gets his camera ready for his Project 365 picture. Since this needs to technically be taken by him, it will be on a timer. So he will say he's ready, I will look at the camera as he holds it and make sure both he and the shuttle are in view. His picture will fire, and we'll both go back to watching the launch.
• T-plus 80 seconds: At this point, SRB separation will be coming up. I'll make the final call during the event, but this is the time where I might choose to take camera in hand myself and take some non-automatic pictures of the launch. This may or may not include switching to the 50mm lens, depending on how the situation at the bridge looks coming up to the event.
• T-plus 125 seconds: The solid rocket boosters separate from the external tank. At this point, as I understand it, the shuttle will more or less no longer be visible. The launch has concluded. Time to get some pictures of the exhaust trail, the crowds watching, and bask in the moment.

Obviously, James and I only practiced part of that (specifically, me starting my automatic picture taking, and our pictures in front of the launch). He may think have thought I was crazy, but I think the practice is going to pay off on the big day. After all, we only get one shot at this.

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About 7 years ago

Lovely Orlando

So much rain

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About 7 years ago

My heart!

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About 7 years ago

Four more years!

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About 7 years ago

My favorite gif of the year so far

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About 7 years ago

Look what I got in Artist Alley!

I wanted some art on the back of my ereader, so I commissioned someone in Artist Alley! I love the results!